Three Times Haunted
by Sth10
Summary: John Boulton's recollections of a time when he had it all and slowly lost it until there was nothing left.


DISCLAIMER - 'The Bill' characters depicted in this story are copyrighted to Thames Television/Pearson Corp. All other characters depicted in this story are copyrighted to the relevant author or creator.  
  
**THREE TIMES HAUNTED**  
  
The graveyard is deserted but for one man. He stands in silence, eyes fixed on his worn trainers, in front of the two small headstones, one little more than a little stone plaque, now tainted by a mixture of age and exposure. There should be tears burning in his eyes, but there are none, nothing but the slightest flicker of feeling in the bright hazel. Too many years have passed for this man to feel grief; too much has happened and too much has changed.  
  
He doesn't really know why he's there. It feels wrong, returning now after so long, but he can't quite bring himself to leave. This quiet place, inhabited only by the dead, is perhaps the only place where he will be able to bring himself to face the past. He has always known he would come back, even on that dark day all those years ago when he had said his final goodbyes.  
  
He forces his eyes up, to focus on the stones before him. For the first time in nearly ten years, he reads the inscriptions carved into the granite. Richard and Malachy Boulton – Ricky and Mal. Wherever they may be, let God always watch over them  
  
John Boulton crouches slowly down in the over-long grass. And finally, after so long, he allows himself to let the ghosts that had once been his family back into his heart.  
  
X X X  
  
People just assume that he has only one brother – Mike, the successful architect living in Sydney. He can't blame them. In the sixteen years he has lived in London, he has only ever mentioned Mike, even then only on rare occasions. He can't see the point in dragging up the past again, the past that he desperately wants to forget. It hurts too much, even after all these years. The wounds that should have healed long ago are still raw deep down inside him.  
  
Maybe one day he will let the people he likes and trusts know the truth, the truth about the family he will never speak about. The truth about the people that for so long have mattered the most to him – his brothers.  
  
This is John Boulton's story of the ghosts that have haunted him for so long, ghosts he has tried to hide, deny and rubbish. Only he knows he will never be able to truly do so.  
  
X X X  
  
JOHN  
  
Welcome to my mind. This is what is imprinted indelibly on my brain, never to be worn or forced away. Take a look. Try and make sense of what I've been trying to make sense of for over twenty-five years.  
  
1970 - Mike, Malachy, John, Ricky, Andrew.  
  
1972 – Mike, Malachy, John, Andrew  
  
1977 – Mike, Malachy, John  
  
1979 – Mike and John.  
  
Just years, just names. They don't mean anything to anyone but me. Those are the names of the people who were once my brothers. Those are the years I lost them, one by one, until there was only Mike left.  
  
X X X  
  
I was born, not into a family of three, but into one somewhat larger. There was seven of us in the end including my parents – my loud-mouthed, self-centred father who deserved everything he got, and my hard-working, loving mother who deserved so much better.  
  
That's five kids, five rough-and ready boys.  
  
Mike, the eldest, four years ahead of me, the only one who ever took any real responsibility for himself and his life. We always knew he'd go far.  
  
Malachy, three years older, the strong, silent one who feared nothing and no one. He had that control we all wanted but could never quite gain. God knows how he kept it in his grasp.  
  
Then me, the wild, out-of-control tearaway who spent his life hiding behind a shield of rage and loathing, who just needed someone, anyone, to tell him it would be all right. Only I wasn't on my own; I had someone, someone I've never told anyone about - my twin Ricky, the calmer, more rational image of myself who could have achieved so much, but who never got the chance too.  
  
And finally Andrew, a year behind, the angry kid filled with hatred at what he had been born into, hatred at the man who had effectively destroyed him before he had even entered the world – his father.  
  
The Boulton family complete, for then. It hurts me to admit we all took after Dad – cocky, loud, fiery, proud of who we were. Just shows, pride can hide the deepest cracks, the worst pain, the hardest suffering. I know now that we shouldn't have been proud, that we had nothing to be proud of. But back then, that was all we had to cling too.  
  
My family was never one of those tight-knit Northern clans you see in those 1930's dramas on TV. We weren't living in poverty, but we all knew we were poor, in more ways than one. Not that it mattered; the nicest family in our street was also the poorest. Only we weren't a nice family. We were probably one of the worst.  
  
We had to live with it. Live with the walls shaking with the volume of the rows. Live with the neighbours turning up their radios to block out the sounds of fists making contact with bodies. They'd look at us as we walked to school in the mornings and shake their heads in pity. In the afternoons, when we returned, they'd look at us again and this time shake their fists in anger because we'd beaten their kids up at break. We couldn't win. We had to act like we didn't care, like we just accepted our lives. We had to stay proud. If there's one thing I remember most about that time, its what Mam always told us, the one thing we all clung too for years - Boulton boys don't cry.  
  
Ricky and I always stuck together. We were inseparable half the time, two little Scouse devils with quick mouths and quick tempers. It was us against the world. We were both bolshie, dominant little sods determined to rule the roost. We were younger versions of Dad, and that sickens me now.  
  
Malachy loved to set us on each other in the schoolyard, and would go round collecting viewing money off the other kids who crowded round to watch us fight. We'd wrestle; kick and punch the hell out of each other; then walk away with our arms flung round the other's shoulders. No one could turn us against each other.  
  
I lost Ricky first, on a dark November evening when he was killed by a drunk driver. It wasn't Dad, but we all knew it could so easily have been. He died instantly. I never got a chance to say goodbye. From that day on I knew, no matter how many brothers I had, I was on my own.  
  
Mam broke the news to me. I sat there at the kitchen table and stared at her. I didn't understand. Ricky was six. People didn't die when they were six. They died when they were old and deaf, like Granddad had. Besides, how could Ricky die without me? We did everything together. Almost everything that happened to Ricky happened to me, and vice versa. I didn't understand why I wasn't dead. I left Mam and wandered up to our room, expecting to see him sitting there, waiting for me. He wasn't.  
  
Frowning, I went and lay on Ricky's bed and waited for him to come home.  
  
I don't recall much about the funeral. One of the few things I do remember is looking at Ricky's coffin and wondering at how small it was, nothing like the ones on TV. I didn't think my brother was in there, was convinced we were just going to bury an empty box when Ricky was somewhere else. A kid's mind is a fragile thing, and I think mine was shattered by that one single day. It took me years to fit the pieces back together. Even today, I know there are fragments still missing.  
  
I remember staring for ages at the coffin as it sat at the front of the church. I didn't feel anything about the actual box; it wasn't much more than a few pieces of wood to me. But I wanted to smash the little gold nameplate that had been screwed on the lid. It had Ricky's full name on, and all I could think was he wouldn't have liked that – no one ever called him anything but Ricky. Days later, when the headstone was made, I made sure Mam and Dad had 'Ricky' in speech marks engraved under the usual details.  
  
Later, after everyone else had left the graveside, relieved to get away from the death and grief, Mike, Malachy, Andrew and I stayed. We sat beside the mound of earth Ricky lay under, not speaking, not even looking at each other, just thinking. Hours later, long after Mike, Mal and Andy had gone, I still sat there. I didn't want to leave Ricky on his own in that horrible, cold graveyard. I was convinced that if I left, I'd lose him for good. So I stayed, alone, talking to my twin's grave.  
  
I refused straight to go back in our room after the funeral. I hadn't slept in there since the accident anyway. I'd been pushed in and told to go to bed, but would've rather have jumped into the pits of hell. I'd ended up crawling into Mal's bed every night and sleeping in there with him. It had made me feel better, knowing that big, intense Mal was close to look out for me.  
  
Mam got really bothered about me after that. She tried to talk to me, and Dad tried to beat the hell out of me to make me do as I was told. Nothing worked. Eventually, Mam was so troubled by my reactions, and by Dad's way of dealing with the situation, that one morning she just walked in, grabbed Malachy, and moved him and all his belongings into my room. Mal didn't say a word about the whole thing. We'd stay up late at night and talk about Ricky. Mal would tell me he'd be having a great time, learning to swim and roller skate and he wouldn't have to go to school or eat vegetables. After about a week, I started sleeping in Ricky's bed and Mal took mine. I knew then that I hadn't lost my twin.  
  
X X X  
  
I turned twelve in the September of 1977. A lot of things had changed by then. My parents' once rock-solid marriage was strained and beginning to crumble. My brothers and I would spend the nights sitting in bed, listening to the fights raging downstairs. We'd all changed as well. Mike had grown into an adult, seemingly overnight, and provided a much-needed figure of stability for the rest of us, all still very much kids. Malachy had hit puberty and shot up to well past Mike's five foot nine height, developing from a cute kid into a good-looking, athletic teenager who led the way in both the school track team and his social circles. I had also followed in his footsteps and become the star of the rugby team, gaining an early height advantage like my brother until my growth spurts ended prematurely.  
  
But out of us all, it was Andrew who had changed the most. At ten, he had started to go off the rails in a way that made me, a mouthy and wayward troublemaker, look like an angel. On his eleventh birthday, the police turned up on the doorstep to arrest him for breaking into cars and nicking the radios. From then on, that was it. Whilst Mike worked for his exams, and Malachy and I proved our prowess on the sports fields, Andrew broke every rule in the book and more besides. No one could stop him from doing what he did; nothing that could be said made a difference. It was as if he wasn't the same guy any more.  
  
Mam and Dad went to the edge of hell with Andrew. He got in with this gang of older lads at school. They introduced him to a real life of youth crime. Little more than two months after he'd started hanging out with this gang, my eleven-year-old brother had tried weed, ecstasy, LSD, speed, poppers and probably more. He'd been arrested for criminal damage, breaking and entering, TWOC, assault, robbery and shoplifting. Mam and Dad had paid out thousands of pounds in fines for him. Things were fast reaching boiling point.  
  
Finally, those things went past boiling point. Just before his twelfth birthday, Andrew was dragged home kicking and screaming by two uniforms. He'd been caught selling weed outside school. I think that was the final straw for Mam and Dad. The next day, Andrew's social worker came round. She put his things in two bin bags, sat in the living room with a coffee whilst Dad signed a sheaf of papers, then led my brother out to her car. She shoved him into the passenger seat, threw his bags on top of him, and drove away, neither glancing back once. Mam and Dad had signed Andrew over into local authority care, on the grounds of him being out of their control. He was placed in a secure children's centre. He wouldn't be coming home again.  
  
The next time I saw Andrew he was in court. He was sentenced to a year in the secure centre, along with community service. As he was led away, he looked over at Mike, Mal and me, and spat.  
  
Andrew never left care. Foster families took him into their homes but none of them could handle him. He always got sent back with the usual excuses – wild, uncontrollable, rude, violent. When he was fifteen he was sent to a young offenders institute for numerous offences building up against him. He ended up serving eight months. He stayed in authority care until he was eighteen, breaking law after law, until he was finally a legal adult and could leave to start his own life. He left Liverpool and went to Manchester. He spent three years in Strangeways Prison for ABH. My kid brother had become a career criminal.  
  
Andrew severed all contact with the family when he was taken into care. Today, I don't know what he's doing. He could be back inside. He could be on the straight and narrow. He could even be a drug addict like those losers he used to deal to on Liverpool street corners when he was just fifteen. To be honest, I don't think I really care.  
  
X X X  
  
Nearly two years passed. Dad had been an alcoholic for a year. Mike had left school and was taking A-levels at night-college. Malachy had begun to dream about becoming a professional sprinter and running for Ireland, our mother's native country. Andrew, back in care after another failed foster placement, had been charged, at 12 years old, with arson and was looking at being taken into juvenile custody. And I had just let the time pass by; let it carry me along with it. Whilst my brothers continued on with their lives as best they could, I just wondered what had happened to my family.  
  
Towards the end of that year, Dad started getting really bad. He would lay into us over the smallest things, getting us down on the floor and beating us black and blue. Mike took it all without a sound. Mal and I screamed, yelled and fought back with all the strength we had in us. It never made a difference.  
  
The days became my sanctuary from those nights. By that time, I had experienced things that had mentally scarred me, and even the smallest action was a big deal for me. The simplest things; playing rugby, hanging around with my mates, having a quiet half an hour to go and sit by Ricky's grave, meant a hell of a lot to me then.  
  
Malachy became my mentor. Mike, having become distanced by past events, wasn't easy to approach and I never felt truly close to him in the later years after Ricky's death. Mal was different. He walked to school with me every day, despite him being a cool final year student and me just a little First Year. He'd throw a rugby ball around in the park for me, even if his mates were there. Even when he went out, he'd sometimes take me with him. At thirteen I was being regularly sneaked into clubs.  
  
I thought Mal was God's gift to the world, at a time when I really needed someone I could always rely on. He was the heartthrob of our school; could turn the heads of seventeen and even eighteen-year-old girls at just fifteen. Along with his Irish name, after Mam's grandfather, he had also picked up the Irish roots in our family and looked like something out of the movies. He stood at nearly six feet tall, with jet-black hair almost down to his collar and the Irish blue eyes that could entrance every girl in our street. Everywhere he went he had a crowd surrounding him. I loved being his brother, loved walking down the street with him and seeing his admirers stare, mostly because the admirers' younger sisters would in turn stare at me. Mal was great through those years.  
  
I was approaching fourteen when I lost my third brother. One night, Malachy just packed up his stuff and walked out of the front door, whilst I slept on in the bed next to his. That was it. No goodbye or anything. He didn't even leave a note. I woke the next morning to find my brother's prized St Helen's shirt draped over my blankets. I wore it for weeks in the hope that he would walk back in and take me out to throw a ball around. He never did.  
  
X X X  
  
We never heard from Malachy again. Years later, long after we had moved on and taken control of our lives, Mike and I would return to Liverpool and lay a small plaque in the graveyard next to Ricky's headstone. It read simply 'In memory of Mal'.  
  
Even today, I still don't know what has happened to the brother that was once my only protector. I accepted years ago that he is probably dead, buried somewhere in an unmarked grave. But there's a part of me that still believes he's alive and well; settled with a wife and kids and living a happy, secure life. I don't think I'll ever know the truth.  
  
My family has been torn apart by the events of my childhood. Over the years I have watched it crumble around me, as I gradually lost the people that meant so much to me – my brothers. It hurts, hurts more than I could ever describe. For years, all I ever wanted was my family back. I wanted Ricky to still be alive. I wanted Andrew to have turned his back on crime and been taken out of care. I wanted Malachy to have stayed and hacked it out. I wanted my brothers – my best friends.  
  
I have a photo that I look at every day that goes by. It shows Mike, Malachy, Ricky, Andrew and me, standing in front of the house together. It was taken just weeks before Ricky was killed. We're all filled with kids' energy, messing around and grinning into the camera without a care in the world. Our smiles are forever frozen in that photo, reminding me of a time when there was so much to smile about.  
  
Three of those smiles I will never see again. I have accepted that. But I still tell myself, as does Mike, that wherever they are, Malachy, Ricky and Andrew are happy now. And maybe one day I'll see them again. I know we can never go back to being the Boulton Five. But maybe we could at least be the Boulton Four. 


End file.
